going to hell in a handbasket
by ribbons-blue
Summary: Klaus has finally come to steal Elena away. Someone else might just have something to say about that. [Elijah x Elena]


_going to hell in a handbasket_

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_Klaus has finally come to steal Elena away. Someone else might just have something to say about that._

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**NOTE: This story occurs late season 3, immediately after Finn dies and Klaus decides to take Elena and leave Mystic Falls. This explores what may have happened if he had actually followed through with that decision. **

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There had been no warning, no foreknowledge, nothing.

Not a single sign to precede the sudden storm that rips through her already turbulent world, bringing unneeded decimation in its wake.

But such is the way of nature's tempests.

Such is the way of nature's abominations.

Klaus, it seemed, had grown weary of the intricate, repetitive dance of _strike_ and _retaliate_, _kill_ and _avenge_, and Elena could do nothing more than numbly observe as a nonchalant Klaus had strolled into the old boarding house only minutes before, a ruthless smile playing on his lips and a frightening hardness in his blue, blue eyes.

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(_"Hello, Elena," he greets with faux politeness. _

_She hadn't heard him enter the library, the house—not an intimation of footsteps or a closing of a door. The old journal she'd been perusing, desperately searching for some clue as to the Salvatore vampire lineage, drops from her hands as her fingers go limp in shock. _

"_Klaus?" His name is a gasp, a curse, and a fearfulness falling from her lips; something inside of her whispers that she shouldn't be surprised at the pleased smile spreading across his wicked visage as he senses her abrupt fright._

_His advance never stops, his slow approaching movements revealing him as the predator he is; Elena refuses to retreat, her white-knuckled grip on an old wooden chair anchoring her in place. _

"_None other, sweetheart." The affectionate term resonates mockingly throughout the deathly silent room, and Elena suddenly wants to scream __**don't call me that don't call me that don't call me that**_**. **_"Are you ready to go?"_

_Elena's eyes narrow. "Go?" She repeats, stalling, playing for time. Her ears strain for any sign of Damon or Stefan returning, but the house is as regrettably empty as it was only moments ago. "I don't…recall deciding to go anywhere." Her voice is cautious, deliberate innocence cloaking the terrifying realization as the meaning of his words strikes her like a fist in the gut. The careful tone nearly collapses into panic as she chokes on the final word, but she forces herself back into as near a state of calm as she can attain. _

_His grin widens, his flaxen hair and porcelain skin granting him the perfection of a painting, done by an artist that has labored countless hours to smooth every line, to painstakingly adorn each blank space with the color of a brushstroke. Klaus is a crafted mask under a mask under a mask—Elena wonders if even he has any idea of his true self any longer. _

"_You didn't."_

_He's reached her now, his hand suddenly encircling her wrist with a grip of pure steel, binding her to him through a single touch that threatens to poison and destroy. Her own pulse thrums deafeningly in her head as his hold tightens to an excruciating degree. There is no need to question or query, no desire to ask—the answer is in his cold, determined gaze and the fingers imprisoning her. _

_Klaus has finally come to spirit her away. _

_Elena can't help it—she steps back, pulling as far as his unyielding grasp will allow. Because __**she doesn't want this she doesn't want this she doesn't want this. **_

_She can see, in a horrible, maudlin sort of mosaic of jumbled pictures, the rest of her life playing out before her eyes, if Klaus succeeds in taking her. Sees herself used over and over and over again as a hybrid generator, a supplier of blood and vitality that has no name and no future except that which her captor allows her. A forgotten person. The bile is rising in her throat now, as the dread and recognition of hopelessness begins to seep inside of her heart, clutching it in a constricting embrace. _

"_I won't," she breathes out, her voice emerging as dry and raspy. "I won't go with you. I'd rather _die_." That expression is overused and about a hundred sorts of cliché, but Elena knows, without any sliver of doubt or uncertainty, that it is nothing short of the truth. _

_Klaus laughs then, but the sound is not a pleasing one. _

_It is not Jeremy's teasing laugh, or Caroline's high-pitched giggle. It sounds nothing like Matt's deep and comforting one, or Bonnie's light and airy mirth. There is no resemblance to the low chuckle of Stefan in one of his rare moments of levity, or to the uncommon, boyish one of Damon that causes his face to light up._

_This laugh, Elena thinks, is an unfeeling dirge._

_The ancient vampire before her speaks then, his words sweeping over her like the most frigid of winter chills. "Elena, Elena, Elena." He indolently reaches out to touch her face with long, spindly fingers; she jerks her head away in repulsion. "Whatever gives you reason to think I'm allowing you a choice?")_

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The blood is seeping slowly from the gash on her arm where a vase (_a priceless Salvatore family heirloom, now lying in pathetic shards upon the floor)_ had broken her fall. It is steadily flowing onto a small puddle gathering on the floor, painting her clothing red and the ground a rich crimson.

Her leg is burning, as though a thousand needles have punctured it with the intent of permanently pinning her to the ground. Belatedly, she wonders if it's broken.

She wouldn't know. She's never had a broken leg before—her parents had never allowed so much as a scratch to mar her skin, and after that her body had been untiringly safeguarded by an ever watchful set of Salvatores.

But it hurts.

Everything hurts _so much._

Stefan, she dully notes through a hazy cloud of panic and terror, is somewhere to her left, groggily stirring as the coppery scent of her injury wafts through the air, permeating every last nook and cranny of the library.

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(_When Stefan finally arrives, slamming through the doors without ceremony or hesitance, Klaus turns to a silent Elena, staring in fear and apprehension at her once-boyfriend._

"_Let her go, Klaus." Stefan, always the one to go for the most obvious, and most ineffective, statements._

_Most likely, it's this that causes a short ripple of laughter to emit from the Original. _

"_Your knight has come at last, it seems," Klaus comments in a stage whisper to her. He casts an amused glance at the younger Salvatore, who is fairly shaking with uncharacteristic fury. "Here to fight for her honor? To stop the dragon from kidnapping the fair princess?" There is a pause, and a slight smile plays on his lips. "Though judging by the rather exhausting manner in which you and your brother have been keeping her locked up in your tower of chivalry recently, I wonder, really…" His eyes rake over Stefan's face, blue clashing with brown. "Who exactly is the wicked dragon here?"_

_Stefan scowls, his body tensing as his eyes meet his tormentor's unwaveringly. _

_Klaus sighs and looks away, as though finding the entire situation to be wholly unsavory to his tastes. "I was hoping to be done with this quickly, actually," Klaus says idly, favoring the sloping ceiling with a bored look. "But I suppose…"_

_And then he is heading towards her, faster than her mind can comprehend or her eyes can catch, body melting into the air. _

"_Elena!"_

_She has only enough time for her eyes to widen and her mouth to drop open in shock, and then Stefan is in front of her, pushing her violently aside as Klaus crashes into him, hands locking around his throat. _

_Everything seems to drastically slow around her, time crawling to a tedious and unbearable pace, as she is flung through the air and Stefan is bodily trapped against a bookshelf, Klaus mercilessly squeezing the very breath from him. Stefan coughs and writhes, but Klaus is unrelenting—their shared history will not save him now. _

"_You've crossed me one too many times, I'm afraid," he tells the gasping vampire before him, almost apologetically. "But no longer." _

_A crash breaks through her stunned reverie; she is distantly aware that there is a stinging sensation somewhere on her right arm, and her body is limp and unresponsive upon the floor as a faint pain ebbs it into a stupor._

_It takes her a long, terrible moment for her to realize the crash was the sound of her body hurtling to the other end of the room from Stefan's desperate push. She lies there like a useless puppet, the strings of her animation cut and a sticky liquid beginning to seep from somewhere unknown, pasting her clothes to her skin. _

_As though listening from another's ears, or watching a fuzzy old video tape with static ripping hinderingly through the voices, she hears everything. _

_Hears the small pants and choking noises of Stefan as Klaus's fingers dig deeply into his throat, hears Klaus's nearly inaudible "I'm sorry it has to end this way, old friend."_

_Books are dislodged as Stefan's thrashing head repeatedly hits against the shelves. Dickens and Dumas and Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, with their fearless heroes and notions of honor, are falling down, down, down, and all Elena can think is that they don't know a damn thing about what a true hero is.)_

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Elena limply braces a hand against the wall, a bloody print leaving an irreversible mark against it. She mistakenly thinks she'll make it onto her feet, but then her twisted, stupid leg gives out from beneath her, sprawling her in a collapsed heap upon the hard floor yet again. A soft sound escapes her then, pain and panic bleeding into one, echoed by the crumpled blonde girl lying motionlessly across the room, her hurting eyes staring pleadingly at Elena.

"_No…"_ It is the tiniest little gust of air, barely a word, but it carries like the loudest of trumpets in the otherwise silent room. Caroline coughs, before attempting another ragged plea of, "_No, Elena, no."_

But Elena cannot, and does not, even spare a glance at her fallen friend, aware that even a single look will undoubtedly crumble her tentative resolve.

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(_Stefan's eyes have nearly rolled upwards, his hands scrabbling futilely at Klaus in a last-ditch effort at warding him off. _

_Elena violently curses her still stunned body, ironically paralyzed by its own life-saving reaction to trauma (stay still…conserve energy…replenish strength…), and she desperately wishes for someone, anyone, to save the life of the person who had once been so precious to her._

_Being human has never been an aspect of her she's viewed as detrimental or worthless, but as she stays on the floor, incapable of doing anything more than _watching_, a self-hatred courses through her like never before. _

_Her wish is indeed answered, seconds later—it comes in the form of a blonde spitfire, who rushes across the room in a blur invisible to the naked eye and wrenches Klaus away from her former mentor, bubble-gum pink nails driving bloody crests into his skin with a fury. _

_They spin away from a wildly coughing Stefan who falls to the floor with a near-crushed windpipe, locked in some sort of gory waltz of twists and snarls as Caroline viciously sinks her teeth into her foe's shoulder, his neck, his arm, over and over again. Blood spurts, spraying the upturned room with a swiftly oxidizing sheen of crimson that fades into dull copper. _

_Klaus acts on instinct, easily reaching back and seizing hold of the young vampire, tossing Caroline off of his person as though she were nothing more than a child's rag doll. Surprise crosses his face for the briefest of instances as recognition dawns, swiftly followed by a shadow of something similar to pain, and then stoicism descends yet again. _

_Caroline, with her dancer's grace and indomitable spirit, contorts her body in midair and lands harshly on her feet. One hand uncaringly wipes away the blood staining her lips, the other pushes back wild curls that threaten to obscure her vision. _

_Her opponent doesn't move, surveying her with a blank expression. "Fancy meeting you here, Caroline. Come to try your hand at rescuing the fair Elena as well?"_

_He looks from the still vampire before him to the rapidly healing punctures that decorate his upper body. There is a twisted degradation of pride in his voice as he addresses her. "It was an admirable attempt, love." _

"_Klaus," Caroline exhales quietly, and Elena has no time to wonder at the strange sort of tenderness that taints her tone, gentleness that one would attribute a lover. "Don't. Please…just don't. You're better than—you can be better than—" And Caroline, strong, determined Caroline, breaks into a million little pieces before Elena's eyes. "She's my best friend, please! You can't just _take _her!"_

_Something odd flickers behind Klaus's hooded gaze then, and Elena might have been tempted to think Caroline's heartfelt words are having some unexpected effect upon the Original. _

_Except Damon comes barreling into the room a moment later, disrupting the precarious tension, and Klaus is backhanding a shocked Caroline into a wall with a sudden furious, defensive snarl of "Don't".)_

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This time she succeeds in hauling herself up from the ground.

It's done shakily, and her breath is whooshing from her body in agonized pants by the time she's able to brace herself against the wall, but she succeeds. The flicker of satisfaction is faint, but it strengthens as her wavering gaze lands on the blonde hybrid.

Because she'll be damned if she _crawls_ to the absolute _monster_ waiting patiently in the middle of the room, surrounded by a hideous blend of smashed furniture and weakly stirring figures like some sort of victorious warlord in the aftermath of battle.

She carefully, painstakingly, ignores the agonizing torture streaking up her leg as she tries to step over Damon's body, the only cause for a iridescent spark of hope in his condition being his low groans and convulsively flickering eyelids.

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(_Caroline disappears into a shower of dust and plaster as pieces of the wall rain down upon her still form, the large tomes tumbling off shelves parodying the sound of thunder with their heavy _thump thump thumps_. _

_A choked sob works its way into her throat as Damon—brave, unwavering Damon—approaches Klaus, murder in his coiled motions and emanating from every tensed muscle of his body. _

_Klaus has resolutely turned away from Caroline's prone body, a smirk plastering itself onto his unnaturally rosy lips as he greets the new intruder. "Ah, Damon as well. A little too late, as always."_

_In an uncharacteristically focused moment, Damon dismisses the insult. His eyes are black fire, peppered with spidery black veins, his teeth bared in an open-mouthed snarl. "You aren't taking her, Klaus."_

"_I _would_ say, 'And who's going to stop me?', but I feel that's rather too redundantly cliché for my tastes, don't you?"_

_Damon flexes his fingers, glares. "I'm not here to talk, bastard."_

_Klaus shrugs. _

_Damon leaps forwards._

_Elena closes her eyes._

_Because she already knows how this is going to end.)_

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One step.

And another.

Yet another.

The world has mysteriously darkened about her to form an airless black tunnel, leaving only Klaus's laughably golden presence to beckon and guide her at its melancholy end (_golden hair, golden skin—a demon masquerading as an aesthetic Grecian deity)._

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_( "Stop."_

_Her voice rings out in the silence as Klaus leisurely stalks towards the black-clad form of Damon, now lying twitchingly a few feet away as his broken spine struggles to re-knit itself, to heal itself of Klaus's brutalities. _

_It hadn't taken much to fell her friend—Damon's strength, for all of his passion and reckless devotion he pours into his fight, is no comparable challenger to a creature that has lived for thousands of years. _

_Klaus smiles and comes to a gradual halt, as though heeding her command, mockingly commenting, "Oh? Does this mean you're consenting to come now…I thought you'd rather die, Elena?" _

_Her fingernails dig into her palms, slicing little crescents across the surface as she struggles to hold her tongue, to prevent the heedless flow of madcap, irascible words that she longs to bestow upon him. For she hates him. She hates him more than she's ever hated anyone in her entire life. _

_But he's stopped his deadly approach towards her precious people, and that's all that matters. _

_That's all that matters._

"_I would," she says harshly, gutturally, meeting his gaze levelly despite the boiling emotion behind those two simple words. "I would rather die…but that doesn't mean I want my friends to be the price of that."_

"_Even though you know the sort of lifetime you're condemning yourself to?" Klaus muses lightly, as though he and Elena are discussing nothing more than the weather, or perhaps their favorite books. "Let them keep fighting me and who knows?" He heaves his shoulders up and down theatrically, spreading his hands wide in the universal gesture of nonchalance. "One of them might have a chance at bringing me down…for the moment. Surely to buy enough time for you to escape, sweetheart. After all, you're quite good at that." He inclines his head with a speculative tilt, an invitation for rebuttal. _

_Elena clasps a hand against her arm, fingers clenching tightly around it as Klaus so easily dismisses her loved ones' worth to her. She's afraid that if she doesn't, she'll launch herself at the thing before her, all rational thought of counter-productivity and her deadweight leg be damned._

"_I'm not you," she hisses in a surprisingly dark tone—one that has even Klaus raising an eyebrow in interest. "I don't sacrifice the people I care about to further my own ends. Not my brother, not my best friends, no one. I. Am. Not. You." She struggles into a sitting position then, blinking the sweat the movement evokes from her eyes. "So, I'll go with you. Just _stop hurting them._"_

_Even as she says those words, grinding them out from behind clench teeth, an image of her brother rises to the forefront of her tired mind, bringing with it the inevitable barrage of regret and guilt she completely expects, and perversely welcomes. He'll never forgive her for this, she knows, just as she would never forgive herself should she allow another set of names to be added to the long, long list of people she couldn't save. _

_Her parents, her beloved aunt, her birth parents—how many victims do there have to be before she's paid her dues, before she's spilt enough of her heart's blood to atone for becoming involved with people she should have left well enough alone?_

_Klaus holds out a hand. Utters a simple "Come, Elena."_

_Hating herself, she begins the arduous battle to rise to her feet. _

_Loving her friends, silently bidding goodbye to her brother, she starts the slow funeral march towards the rest of her life.)_

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She's about to take his hand, to curl her fingers into the open palm that is eagerly anticipating spiriting her away into the darkest bowels of hell.

Knowing what awaits her in Klaus's intended future, Elena doesn't consider that an exaggeration in any sense.

She's about to take his hand, she _would_ have taken his hand, but once again fate decides to throw her an unexpected bone in the form of a timely rescuer.

Who the rescuer _is,_ of course, is irony at its best. He's a rogue piece on a chessboard of black and white players, an ambiguous mixture of the two that her mind struggles to compartmentalize. He's her betrayer and odd confidante, her almost-friend and unwilling foe. It's frightening to trust him, agonizing not to, and altogether too tempting to treat him as anything other than the double-edged sword that he is.

But whatever conclusions her mind draws from logic and practicality, her heart has already realized that she made her decision in regards to this man a long time ago.

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"Hello, Niklaus."

When he arrives, the first wave of feeling that sweeps through her, searing every nerve in her body, is that of relief.

Boundless, uninhibited relief.

Because she's safe.

They're safe.

He's here, and nothing can hurt her.

_Elijah_.

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**Author's note: Hit writer's block on 'impulse'…and this little ficlet popped out instead. If I continue it, it will just have one other chapter. Or I might just leave it as a one-shot and up to my readers' bountiful imaginations! :) **


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